Bishop Kevin Farrell of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas has taken issue publicly with a Southern Methodist University professor’s upcoming lecture on U.S. Catholic bishops and abortion law.

The Rev. Charles Curran is a Catholic priest and ethicist who has long taught at SMU, and who also has a history of tangling with the Vatican over social issues.

He’s to give a lecture Thursday at SMU titled “The U.S. Catholic Bishops and Abortion Legislation: A Critique From Within the Church.”

An SMU press release says: “Curran’s lecture will examine how U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have made opposition to legal abortion their primary social issue, and will challenge the bishops from a theological perspective for claiming too much certitude in their position.”

Bishop Farrell affirmed the American bishop’s consistent position against abortion with church teachings from Pope John Paul II in a statement on the SMU Catholic Campus Ministry’s website.

“There is room in the Catholic Church for different positions on many issues,” Farrell said. “However, on the taking of innocent human life there is no room for ambiguity.”

Curran, who has stirred controversy before by challenging church teachings on social issues, accepts that abortion is always wrong and sees his paper as addressing the church’s advocacy for abortion laws in the U.S..

Although Curran was banned from teaching theology at Catholic University in the 1980s for disagreeing with the church’s stance on birth control for married couples, homosexuality, divorce, marriage and women in ministry, he doesn’t take a progressive stance for the sake of being progressive. He presents a thoughtful argument, according to the National Catholic Reporter:

Anyone who’s been to a Curran lecture and expects fiery denunciations of church teaching from the radical left always leave disappointed. He is a measured, very detailed and tediously researched scholar who, I’d venture to say, has read more about church teachings, its origins and how it is used, than most bishops anywhere. That’s not to denigrate bishops, it’s just to say that most of them aren’t theologians. The point is that Curran takes the teaching very seriously, and when he critiques it, it is with a nuance and consideration that doesn’t yield easy sound bites.